Carol Burnett Says Daughter Carrie Despatched a Signal Sooner than Opening Their Play

Carol Burnett says she felt her gradual daughter Carrie Hamilton’s presence on the evening she opened their play Hollywood Hands.

On the most contemporary episode of the Dear Multi-Hyphenate podcast, Burnett recalled a touching memory about Carrie, who died in 2002 of lung most cancers.

Host Michael Kushner asked the 89-yr-outdated comic if she had any tales to allotment about engaged on Hollywood Hands — a play tailored from Burnett’s memoir One Extra Time — with famed theater director Hal Prince, who died in 2019.

Burnett suggested him that Prince was vastly supportive while she and her daughter wrote the mark, which opened on the Goodman Theatre in Chicago about three months after Carrie’s death. It transferred to Broadway that very same yr, but Carrie would by no procedure gaze her work fully realized on stage.

“Carrie passed away and I… Correctly, I’m her mom, and I did no longer are searching for to derive up and doing,” the actress recalled. “And my husband — [the show was] going into previews — acknowledged, ‘Carol, you owe this no longer most attention-grabbing to Carrie but you owe it to Hal to retain out.’ ”

Soon after, Burnett and her husband, Brian Miller, flew to Chicago for the previews. “We’re on the airplane, my husband and I, to Chicago, and I acknowledged relatively of prayer to Carrie,” she suggested Kushner. “I acknowledged, ‘I will be doing this but I ticket no longer are searching for to be alone. Be with me. Somehow be with me. I settle on a signal you’re going be with me even supposing you are no longer mark bodily.’ ”

Carol Burnett.
Jon Kopaloff/Getty

When Burnett arrived at her hotel in Chicago, there was a wide bouquet of birds-of-paradise flora from Prince. “[Carrie] had a rooster of paradise tattooed on her correct shoulder. I known as Hal and acknowledged, How ticket ?’ ” she remembered. ” ‘That was Carrie’s current flower.’ And he acknowledged, ‘I did no longer. I correct known as down and acknowledged send up one thing uncommon to Carol’s room.’ ”

The subsequent day, Burnett, Miller and Prince went to dinner after rehearsal. “The maître d’ introduced over a bottle of champagne, compliments of the administration, and on the mark it acknowledged, ‘Louise,’ ” the six-time Emmy-winning actress acknowledged. “That was Carrie’s heart name and my mother’s name.”

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The last signal was rain on opening evening. “Carrie and I repeatedly loved rain… and opening evening, it rained,” Burnett acknowledged. “So, I ticket no longer know… a coincidence probably? Nonetheless three things and I correct felt… I felt her.”

Carrie died from pneumonia, a complication from lung most cancers that spread to her mind.

Burnett beforehand spoke about her daughter in a 2018 interview with PEOPLE, announcing, “I focal level on her every day.”

“She by no procedure leaves me,” the comic acknowledged. “I correct feel her.”

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Burnett acknowledged shedding her daughter is never any longer one thing she’ll ever derive over.

“You ticket no longer derive over it, but you cope,” she acknowledged on the time. “What else can you attain? When Carrie died, I did no longer are searching for to derive up and doing for a while, but I had a play to retain out that we began that Hal Prince was going to screech. I owed it to Carrie, and I owed it to Hal.”

Final month, the actress began to lead the charge to comprise Broadway’s Majestic Theatre be renamed the Harold Prince Theatre. “Please join me on this labor of esteem to comprise the Majestic Theatre renamed the Harold Prince Theatre. Put up a video announcing ‘The Majestic is match for a Prince’ (with the caption #themajesticisfitforaprince) and I will repost it,” she wrote on Instagram. “Collectively we are in a position to comprise this a actuality!”